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Prosecution Expert Witness "No Longer Employed" By Hospital; Now: Jury Deliberations Underway in Lindsay Clancy Trial; U.S. Survivor Of Nepal Floods: It Came "Just Like a Tsunami"; 570 Plus Dead, 1,900 Plus Missing In Catastrophic Nepal-China Floods; White House: Will Appeal Judge's Block On Trump's Mail Ballot Order; Judge Pauses USPS Plan To Restrict Mail Ballots That Trump Ordered. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired August 28, 2026 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Think we know, but we don't, and I certainly did not, and found incredibly hard to try and even accomplish at that particular moment we had. I got bitten alive by a bug. So, it was an extraordinary journey for months, frankly, through the most high-budget, the most low-budget parts of this prepper mindset.

But you have to remember, according to Dr. Chris Ellis (ph), that ultimately about a third of Americans have put some of their money towards -- 20 million Americans put some of their money towards this, which is an extraordinary figure, Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: An extraordinary figure indeed. Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much for that. We look forward to watching it. You can catch this week's episode of "The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper," Sunday at 8 P.M. Eastern on CNN. It'll be streaming Monday on CNN All Access.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

Waiting for a verdict. We could learn the fate of Lindsay Clancy at any moment. What the jury asked to see as it continues in their deliberations.

Plus, the search for survivors. We have new details on the desperate effort to save lives in Nepal days after catastrophic flooding.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And young adults under 21 spurring on a prediction market frenzy. New data shows they have traded billions so far this year. We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: We start this hour with new developments in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. A jury right now is deliberating whether or not Lindsay Clancy is criminally responsible for killing her three young kids. And CNN is learning that a key witness for the prosecution has resigned from the hospital he was working at.

KEILAR: Yes. Dr. Avram Mack, that's who we're talking about here, a psychiatrist who told jurors just days ago he believes Clancy was not psychotic at the time of the killings. CNN's Jean Casarez is live outside of the courtroom there in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Jean, this is significant because his testimony differed compared to even that of other prosecution witnesses. What's the reaction been there to the news?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it -- it's interesting. CNN was able to confirm that Dr. Avram Mack, who was board certified and is board certified in forensic psychiatry, has resigned from a children's hospital in Delaware. This was a controversial witness. And I will tell you why. It is because, just as you said, he had a differing opinion from the other prosecution rebuttal experts.

Now, none of them believed that she was in psychosis, Lindsay Clancy, at all. But the other witnesses truly believed that she was a bipolar 2 diagnosis and everyone had missed it before she went to the hospital after killing her children. Dr. Mack believed she was in a depressive -- major depressive episode when she killed her three children.

And on cross-examination, the fireworks exploded. Let's watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you agree, sir, that a symptom of postpartum psychosis, in addition to the hearing of the voices, would be delusional beliefs and a distorted reality?

DR. AVRAM MACK: I can't answer because I still don't know if you're referring to the phenomenon of psychosis or you're referring to some illness.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm referring to the illness that Lindsay Clancy was suffering that's in her medical record, sir, that you tell this jury you read. It's all I'm asking.

MACK: Well, I didn't find any evidence of psychosis in her record.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CASAREZ: Now, we do not know why Dr. Mack resigned at this particular time. We have reached out -- CNN has -- for comment from Dr. Mack himself.

SANCHEZ: Jean, if we don't hear a verdict today, how long do we expect the jury to stay before they go home for the weekend?

CASAREZ: Oh, boy, that is the question, isn't it? That is the question. You never know what a jury is going to do. They can do whatever they want to do. This is the first full day of deliberations. They had weeks of trial. There are hundreds of exhibits. They have asked for two of them, which are all the prescription medical -- the bottles of prescription medicines.

They've also asked for, I call it the knife, because there's only one knife in this case. And this is the knife that Lindsay Clancy took out of the kitchen and cut her wrist as the defense says, slit her throat. But they were superficial wounds, according to the first responders and those at the hospital. But that is all we know of. They are diligently deliberating right now.

KEILAR: All right, Jean, thank you so much, live for us from outside court there in Plymouth.

We're joined now by Dina Doll. She's a legal analyst for MeidasTouch, and she hosts the MissTrial podcast.

Dina, first, I want to ask you about the resignation of this prosecution, prosecution witness. What are you thinking about this?

[15:05:06]

DINA DOLL, MEIDASTOUCH ANALYST: I mean, the timing of it, of course, is going to just increase the social media chatter about this trial. Really, whether or not it will affect the case depends on if his resignation has to do with his testimony, in particular, whether or not he gave any factual errors in giving his testimony.

There is a wide latitude in terms of opinions. I mean, this is why you call it a battle of the experts, and every expert has a slightly different opinion. If for some reason his resignation was tied to his testimony, but it had to do with perhaps his institution he worked for not concurring with his opinion, that doesn't necessarily help the defense. It is difficult to have expert testimony be the basis of a new trial. There has to be some sort of factual error that really would make a difference in a case.

SANCHEZ: And Dina, what did you make of jurors asking to see this physical evidence, the prescription pill bottles and -- and the knife that Clancy used?

DOLL: You know, I hope it gives everybody some confidence that jurors take these types of cases very seriously. I mean, again, there's a lot of online chatter about somehow people having a, you know, predisposed opinion and a verdict in advance. And I think that this should give everybody confidence that they're being meticulous. They're evaluating their evidence. The fact that the evidence has to do with her harming herself and not her children perhaps goes to whether or not they are indeed trying to look into the theory, the prosecution's theory that she wasn't actually trying to kill herself. Perhaps it is trying to decide whether or not they agree with that theory.

But I think at the end of the day, we should always be glad to see this kind of diligent, thorough process from a jury, especially with this high profile nature of a case like this.

KEILAR: And Dina, jurors have a few things they are considering here, right? They can consider charges of first-degree murder, second-degree murder or manslaughter. Those come with varying degrees of punishment. Obviously, that takes a lot of discernment. How could -- oh, and also, by the way, they could find her not criminally responsible, which is, of course, what the defense is arguing they should. How does that variety of options complicate their deliberations?

DOLL: You are hitting the nail on the head. It's not a matter of did she kill the children. There are so many variations here. And I think that the fact that Massachusetts in particular, it's only one of three states where the prosecution has the burden to prove that she is actually sane, that she's criminally responsible for the deaths and at the same time, they have the broader interpretation of insanity under the model penal code.

That helps her -- I cannot overstate how much that helps her in this particular case. Because usually when a defendant asserts a defense such as insanity or self-defense, the burden shifts to the defendant to prove that she was insane at that time. But in this case, that burden stays with the prosecution.

So, the prosecution has to not only put forward, like you said, they -- if they were approving premeditation, they have to approve premeditation or the jury can say, well, we don't believe it's premeditated, but we believe it's manslaughter. They have to prove each element of whichever charge and all the charges they were really trying to convince the jury.

Plus, they also then now have to prove that she was sane at the time. That burden shift is so incredibly significant. And it is really then not a matter of whether or not the defense medical experts proved she was insane. It's whether or not the prosecution's medical experts proved she was sane.

SANCHEZ: So, what happens if she's found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility? Does she just get to go home?

DOLL: I mean, then you are -- no, she doesn't just get to go home. You are then put into an institution because you are considered insane by the law. So, it doesn't -- it's not as if she gets to walk. But that does also depend on which of the various murder charges she is found responsible for. Because if you're found responsible for manslaughter versus premeditation, you are talking about different levels of time of incarceration, even if it's in a psychiatric hospital.

KEILAR: The jury here is made up of nine women and three men. And we know from this case, just the discussions that it has prompted outside of the courtroom, that a lot of women are bringing some personal experiences to this. We know that, right? I wonder, in the four persons, a woman, does that, in your mind, potentially change the dynamic of the jury?

[15:10:00]

DOLL: It's interesting because typically you do not want a majority of women on a case such as this. Women tend to judge women more harshly and men judge men more harshly, regardless of what the alleged crime is. But because we do see on social media, which is a little bit of a microcosm of jurors, women in particular and mothers in particular, really sympathizing with her in a way that I have never seen in any case before where a mother's on trial for killing her children.

Usually women are across the board, much more -- judging her much more harshly. In this case, we see the reverse. So, I think the fact that she has a majority of women is not going to hurt her like it otherwise would. SANCHEZ: Dina Doll, appreciate you sharing your point of view. Thanks for joining us.

DOLL: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, urgent rescue operations are ongoing in Nepal. Teams now digging through mud and debris, searching for possible survivors in this week's catastrophic flood. Up next, we're going to speak with the head of a disaster relief group about critical efforts to save lives.

KEILAR: And a CNN hero with a new mission, how a U.S. veteran is using art and music to help fellow vets process trauma when they return from war. We'll have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:15:44]

SANCHEZ: Now to despair and heartache. Families desperate for information as search and rescue teams scour the area along Nepal's border with China in search of survivors from Wednesday's catastrophic floods. CNN spoke with one American who survived the disaster and described what it was like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANJANA RAJA, NEPAL FLOOD DISASTER SURVIVOR: So, the wave came as -- it came just like a tsunami, it just came -- going all the way up and just like a tsunami, the -- how it sweeps going like a roll, it took the buses, the -- the -- the ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Houses.

RAJA: ... houses, people, everything. We saw people just getting sucked in the water. It was so traumatizing to see that. People were screaming, but, of course, water doesn't hear anything, it just kind of suck them in. I don't know if they were thrown away somewhere in the shore, but then this happened. It was just a span of 30 minutes. In 30 minutes, everything was swept and gone. It was -- there was no water after that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Mountains of mud and debris now blanket areas that flooded Wednesday. Today, new flooding threats as surveyors discovered a recently formed lake that has the potential to send another deluge downstream. Officials say 1,900 people are still missing, including 90 Americans. The death toll rising today to nearly 600. The humanitarian crisis though is just beginning.

The Red Cross is estimating that 93,000 people have been impacted by these floods.

With us now to discuss is David Mook (sic). He's the CEO of the humanitarian aid group All Hands & Hearts. And just into CNN, we are getting in video of a touching reunion between a mother and son who went missing during the flooding. I think we can show that now to our viewers.

David, obviously, the scale of this is hard to wrap your head around. Talk to us about the work that your organization is doing on the ground.

Absolutely. It's Nate, by the way.

SANCHEZ: Oh, Nate, forgive.

NATE MOOK, CEO, "ALL HANDS & HEARTS" HUMANITARIAN AID GROUP: Of course, no worries.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

MOOK: So, yes, you know, All Hands & Hearts has been on the ground in Nepal for over 11 years now since the 2015 earthquake devastated the country. So, we had a team that was already on the ground ready to go. So, the moment this disaster hit, we were able to mobilize in Kathmandu and start to get up into the affected areas.

The last 48 hours, as you've been showing, have been incredibly difficult. It's a lot of search and rescues. Some areas have yet to be reached. They're only accessible by army helicopter. We've been mobilizing supplies, getting them to the army, getting them to some of the evacuation centers where families have relocated to. Many are searching for their loved ones. And it's -- it's a really traumatic situation. And we're just really at the beginning right now.

SANCHEZ: And even landing helicopters in those areas is difficult because in many spots, it's still a precarious situation with mud and additional rain. What challenges have your teams faced on the ground?

MOOK: Yes. So, even just today, our teams had to evacuate twice, actually, because there are additional lakes that have formed. And some of those have also started to kind of burst their banks. And so, there's additional water coming down. And so the Nepal authorities are closely monitoring this with drones and helicopters to see what the situation is. But it's very dangerous because you're working in these areas where more water and mud could come down as you're trying to reach survivors and get to these cutoff areas.

SANCHEZ: We're also learning that there are thousands of people that have been displaced. What is the road back for them going to look like?

MOOK: Yes. So, right now, it's estimated about 10,000 families or even up to a hundred thousand people right now are impacted. This means they're either displaced or they're missing or their homes are damaged. And so, this is going to be a long road ahead.

And unfortunately, we saw this after the 2015 earthquakes as well. I mean, it takes a long time not only just to get infrastructure back up and running, but you're talking about homes and schools, like entire communities that have to be rebuilt. And unfortunately, many of the people on our team have lived through this.

SANCHEZ: Yeah.

MOOK: Our Nepali staff have lived in those displacement centers for many months on end back in 2015. And so, they're sort of, you know, while they're there to help, they're also remembering what it was like for them to go through this.

And so, you know, we're very fortunate to be able to -- be able to do something right now. And I hope that, you know, this is going to take the entire world coming together. But it's got to last for a while. We can't just sort of, you know, keep an eye on this for a week and then kind of move on.

[15:20:06]

SANCHEZ: Of course.

MOOK: This is going to be a long term recovery for Nepal.

SANCHEZ: We were speaking to a journalist with Outside Magazine who relocated to Nepal years ago because he found it to be so special. I'm wondering as we look at these images and -- and we look at mountainous terrain and watch the scale of this disaster as this giant wall of mud and water moves through these areas, it almost makes them look like miniatures in -- in a movie. What is it that draws people to this part of the world, this special place that has seen so many tourists and notably dozens of Americans seeming to enjoy it suddenly have gone missing?

MOOK: Yes, you know, this is -- one of the biggest tragedies of this disaster as well, not only for the Nepali people, but this was an area where you had a lot of tourists, 90 Americans, you had Brits, you even had Ukrainians there. I mean, this, you know, we're just starting to learn and understand the scale of this. But it is a special magical place.

I've been there myself quite a bit. I've been on many hikes through the Himalaya to Mount Everest. I've crossed over into Tibet across the Friendship Bridge there. And it is just as you see in some of the images in -- in normal times, it's absolutely stunning. It's magnificent. And so, it is this natural draw for folks to be able to -- to experience that, it's almost otherworldly.

But, you know, these -- it sounds like there was a big glacier that broke off and hit and cause this. And, you know, that is, you know, one of the big concerns in these -- in these areas -- in these mountainous areas.

SANCHEZ: Nate Mook with All Hands & Hearts, thanks so much for joining us.

MOOK: Thank you for the work you're doing.

SANCHEZ: Appreciate the work you're doing.

MOOK: Appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Still plenty more news to come, a big setback for President Trump's plan to restrict mail in ballots more on the fast moving legal battle with major implications for the midterms, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:26:25]

KEILAR: The White House is condemning a new court ruling that temporarily blocks a major portion of the President's executive order that restrict -- restricting mail ballots. Last night, a federal judge in Boston issued a temporary pause that stops the U.S. Post Office from carrying out its part of Trump's order for two weeks.

SANCHEZ: That order mandated that USPS only send ballots to voters on lists of those deemed eligible to vote and that the ballots included special envelopes with barcodes so they could be tracked. The judge's decision involves a part of the case that was not addressed in this week's Supreme Court decision, which sided with the President on mail ballots. CNN's Kristen Holmes is live at the White House for us.

So, Kristen, what does the President plan to do about this judge's decision?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're being told that the White House is going to immediately appeal this decision. It's been a real rollercoaster here because I will remind you that yesterday there was a brief moment in which they said -- the court said that the USPS could start this process with the fact that we knew that there have been several new lawsuits that have been filed and this chance of an injunction. Now, of course, we are seeing that happen.

So, let's talk about what happened with this injunction, the judge blocking these mail-in -- these mail-in voting stuff. So, we have a federal judge temporarily halting the USPS from restricting mail-in voting. The judge ruled that states do not have enough time to implement new requirements ahead of midterm elections specifically. And now that the Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision. And I want to read to you from this ruling -- from this Boston judge.

It says, "Plaintiff States have neither time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of the new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the USPS portal, and upload citizen data to the portal all before midterms."

This was one thing that we assumed was going to happen, that there was going to be so much legal chaos around this ruling specifically that it was going to be impossible to implement this before those midterm elections. Something that we knew that the Trump administration was going to fight tooth and nail. And now, of course, we're hearing from the White House, as you said, they're condemning it. They're saying that this is an activist judge, that the Supreme Court already ruled on this and that they're going to appeal immediately.

This is obviously a line of defense that we've heard from the White House before, that judges that rule against President Trump are activist judges. It should be noted that there are a lot of concerns here that we have heard from state election officials on both sides of the aisle, that if this was to be implemented at this time, when we are shortly before those mail-in ballots are scheduled to go out, early voting is scheduled to begin, that it could cause mass chaos and actually make it worse for those election officials who are trying to get those ballots counted, trying to get the system that they already have in place and they have less resources for because this administration has cut a number of those resources. It was going to make it even harder.

So, that is what the argument is here. We'll obviously see how this plays out. The administration cares deeply about this because President Trump cares deeply about this. They want this done before the midterms. It doesn't seem from the legal experts I'm talking to that there's any way that that could happen, but obviously, never say never.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes live at the White House for us, thank you so much. Still ahead, as the war with Iran officially reaches the six- month mark today, Iran says it has a new list of demands before it reopens the Strait of Hormuz. We'll discuss in just a moment.

[15:29:57]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)